Free The House of Lost Souls by F. G. Cottam

unnerve the two regimental NCOs because they were experienced jungle fighters and had never in their professional lives encountered anything like it. The silence under the tree canopy was almost palpable. The smell of death seemed to permeate their clothing and kit and their sleeping bags. They began to feel more like prey than predators – or that laughable compromise, mediators. There was nothing to mediate. There was no conflict to resolve. They felt like witnesses to an ethnic-cleansing campaign carried out by murderous phantoms.
    ‘What do you know about Gurkhas, Paul?’
    ‘Valiant little fighters from Nepal. Bloodthirsty mercenaries in the cynical pay of the Brits.’
    ‘Neither of those stereotypes really fits them,’ Mason said. ‘Oh, they’re brave enough. And they’re as tough as fuck. And they’re very disciplined. But they’re a long way from being just hired guns. They’re extremely loyal. But they do like to know what’s going on. In fact, they insist upon it. Back in the Korean War, a company of Gurkhas refused to fight in a particularly difficult engagement because they felt they’d been sold an optimistic lie about the strength and disposition of the forces opposing them. So their commander, who was a Sandhurst man, decided on what’s still today a pretty novel approach in the British army. He opted to tell them the truth. He told them that they could expect casualties of around sixty per cent. But that he would personally lead them.’
    ‘I’m sure that reassured them.’
    ‘It did. That’s their mentality. They fought and they did take around sixty per cent casualties, and they won one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war.’
    ‘The Sandhurst officer?’
    ‘Killed,’ Mason said. ‘Early on in the engagement. But that’s not the point.’
    On the morning of their seventh day in the jungle the Gurkha soldier nominated to speak for his comrades voiced their general disquiet. They were not comfortable. They did not feel they knew everything they needed to know to make their mission one they could successfully execute. Mason agreed. He asked SAS sergeant Tom Dillon, who was carrying their coms equipment, to break radio silence and appeal to the French for any information that might possibly assist them. Two hours after the request, the French came back on and gave Dillon coordinates for a missionary outpost about twenty kilometres from their position.
    ‘Crafty, the French,’ Mason told Seaton. ‘The only thing you can say with any certainty about them in the field is that they always know more than they let on.’
    It was the early hours of the following morning before they reached the outpost, a shack on stilts on the banks of a tributary of the Sassandra River.
    Seaton frowned. ‘Actually over the water?’
    ‘Why? Jungle architecture an interest of yours?’
    Seaton just looked at him.
    ‘Yes,’ Mason said. ‘The priest’s house was over the water. You reached it via a pontoon of logs and old oil drums roped together.’
    ‘And the priest was there?’
    ‘It was night when we arrived. He was on his knees, praying by candlelight, fingering a worn set of rosary beads in a tiny tin-roofed chapel built above his living quarters. You climbed a ladder to enter it. It was consecrated, a holy place, but desperately poor. A zinc pail for a christening font. His Mass paraphernalia, the goblet and hosts, in a wooden footlocker embellished with gilt paint on top of an old linen chest for an altar.’
    ‘But a holy place?’
    ‘Yes. In a careworn sort of a way. It was a holy place, all right. But it felt weary. Weary, like its occupant.’
    The priest showed no surprise on seeing armed men enter his tiny place of worship in the early hours. The Gurkhas had removed their bush hats, perhaps as a sign of respect. The priest nodded slightly and rose slowly to his feet and measured his place on the beads of the rosary with his fingertips and kissed its crucifix tenderly before placing